


One Braver Thing

by AbbyBanks



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Genre: M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-02
Updated: 2010-03-02
Packaged: 2017-10-07 15:59:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/66712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbbyBanks/pseuds/AbbyBanks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It had been ninety-seven days since he had last had any communication from Watson</i><br/>Post-movie</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Braver Thing

Holmes threw himself into Lestrade's own chair, stifled a yawn and gave the appearance of listening to the Inspector as he enthused about Holmes's astonishing abilities, about the invaluable service he had again done the country and about the possibility that there was, after all, something to be said for the talented amateur detective. Holmes sneered automatically at the right moments; this speech was all too familiar and he had too often heard Lestrade cast aspersions about his personal hygiene, his sobriety and his mental competence short hours later.

Most of his attention, however, was given over to contemplating a passing comment which the Inspector had made while they were traveling back to the Yard with their prisoner.

"I understand Doctor and Mrs. Watson are anticipating a happy event," Lestrade had remarked, blithely.

"Indeed," Holmes had replied without inflection, a second too late to be entirely casual. A noncommittal response which could equally have meant, 'Indeed so,' or 'Are they, indeed?' The simple-minded Inspector would, of course, assume the former, it would not occur to him that Holmes would not be familiar with even the broadest details of the personal life of the man who had for so long been his closest -- his only -- friend.

It had been ninety-seven days since he had last had any communication from Watson, a card which had arrived as he was nominally at breakfast, sitting cross-legged on the Turkish rug. He was invited to dine at some neutral venue, _Do come, old man, I'd be delighted to see you. JW._

Holmes had propped the card casually against his eggcup and ignored it as he glanced idly over the newspaper. A bank had been robbed in Bethnal Green. Hopkins had arrested a cobbler on suspicion of murder. There were some suggestive notices posted in the personal columns, tucked among the usual births, marriages and deaths. The Tsarevich had survived an assassination attempt.

He dropped the newspaper and caught up the card again. It held no mention of Mary Watson-née-Morstan.

He tore it across into two tidy pieces and cast it carelessly aside. To tear it any further would imply anger or frustration, to burn it would indicate a wish for secrecy. To preserve it as a precious remnant, this flotsam thrown up from the storm upon which their friendship had cracked and broken would be ridiculous. Would be, indeed, an exercise in the kind of sentimentality to which Holmes was entirely immune. To tear it in two and throw it away was the kind of thing any normal person might do when wanting to dispose of a card from someone they had once known rather well, but with whom they now had few dealings and little in common.

He had not replied, and had not heard from Watson since.

'A happy event.' So the inevitable had finally occurred, then, if Lestrade was correct. Holmes was not accustomed to Lestrade being correct; if Lestrade had told him the colour of his own necktie Holmes would have checked for himself before acting on the data. This however had the ring of truth to it. Watson, as Holmes knew all too well, was by nature oversupplied with human passions and was by upbringing a traditionalist. Having found himself a wife and establishment he would naturally want to fill both with small Johns and Marys. And why not? Why should honest, respectable, _admirable_ John Watson, safe within the bounds of Christian matrimony, not grasp the opportunity to perform his most sacred duty as a husband?

Holmes passed a hand tiredly over his eyes. Surely he had gone beyond wishing for such things for himself? Beyond wishing in this lifetime for any more of Watson's regard than he had already enjoyed. Beyond wishing that one day he might be able to reach out his hand at will and claim another human being as his own by right, by his choice and theirs. He had surely outgrown any expectation of that kind of fulfilment.

As for his other, more physical desires... well. For him to remember with such vividness the follies of his university days was surely just an example of the way his mind retained all information presented to it. That those memories had become somehow vividly associated with the person of his erstwhile fellow-lodger and friend was a further, inexplicable example of the tortured workings of the human mind and body.

The Inspector was still talking, explaining to a brace of enraptured constables exactly how Holmes had deduced the boot-boy's guilt. His explanation bore no resemblance to the truth, naturally enough. Holmes wondered idly if, given time, the Inspector would fabulate an entire case around his fictional deductions. Would he go further, and create an entire detective, and an entire London for him to inhabit? At least a private consulting detective of the sort Lestrade would envision would not be given to thinking unthinkable thoughts about the passing figures of his life.

One particular passing figure, anyway, who was even now out there, somewhere. He would be waking at any moment, greeting his wife, bidding her a good morning and continuing to anticipate his 'happy event.' Smiling at her across the breakfast table.

He really was very tired.

He strode from the room without apology. At a brisk pace he returned to Baker Street where he refused Mrs. Hudson's offer of breakfast, locked himself into his rooms and took to his bed, leaving the suit he had been wearing for three days straight in a trail across the floor. He neither pulled the counterpane over his head nor buried his face in his pillow but lay instead stiffly on his back, his hands resting lightly atop the blankets. Like any normal person might. There he fell into a deep but far from dreamless sleep, and awoke gasping several hours later, his bed-sheet clinging damply to his stomach, his fingernails digging into his palms, and one name on his lips.

Perfectly normal.

**Author's Note:**

> I have done one braver thing  
>       Than all the Worthies did ;  
> And yet a braver thence doth spring,  
>       Which is, to keep that hid.
> 
> [The Undertaking](http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/undertaking.htm) John Donne


End file.
